NEW LABOUR is in a panic. Across the board people are rejecting New Labour – from working-class voters at elections to Blair’s handbagging by the Women’s Institute.
All of a sudden government ministers realise they’re increasingly unpopular but they’re wondering why. Well, we can tell them why people are furious with the government.
Many people hoped that Labour would deliver change. But as one Labour adviser warned Blair this week “things have got worse”.
Labour have delivered nothing positive. Poverty is increasing and the government’s measures to remedy it offer little relief.
A report by the United Nations Children’s Fund showed that even if the government gets everyone who is available for work into a job, one-third of Britain’s children will remain in poverty.
That’s assuming the jobs are there. The government’s economic policies are intensifying capitalist manufacturing industry’s crisis and this means more jobs are being lost.
The threat of tens of thousands of job losses are still to work their way through from the car industry crisis and every week many other companies are going under. Another report out this week showed that the government’s New Deal is not cost effective and not meeting the bosses’ needs, who then refuse to offer jobs. In short another Labour failure.
Health isn’t getting any better. Every week brings new scandals about how the NHS’s internal market sees arrogant fat cat consultants get increasingly rich, while patients and other doctors and healthworkers get an even worse service.
Anger over education has reached boiling point among teachers, pupils and parents.
Millions of people are homeless or living in sub-standard accommodation but Labour’s answer to the housing crisis is to sell off housing stock and plead with private industry to build new homes in the South-East, where there is an explosive housing crisis.
Some newspapers say Labour has lost the plot. We don’t believe they ever had the plot; not one that meant improving the lives of working-class people anyway.
But if you are angry at being spun along by New Labour and want an alternative, then join us and fight for the socialist alternative to New Labour.
